Using the KISS Method in Your Writing

I remember 9th grade English. This was the year where my high school began to concentrate on expanding the vocabulary of students. I remember the vocabulary workbooks where we had to focus on the spelling, definitions and usage of words.

We were encouraged to use these newly learned words in our daily conversation and, especially, in our writings.

I learned words like:

Dotard – A person, especially an old person, exhibiting a decline in mental faculties; a weak-minded or foolish old person. (I’m sensitive to this one these days).

Lugubrious – mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner.

Prestidigitation – sleight of hand; legerdemain. (Don’t you love it when two other rarely used words are part of the definition of a rarely used word?)

So, why am I going down memory lane to my high school studies? I learned and retained a lot of these…